


the one good thing i almost did

by iknowhowmystoryends (gorgeouschaos), notyouranswer (gorgeouschaos)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26669221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeouschaos/pseuds/iknowhowmystoryends, https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeouschaos/pseuds/notyouranswer
Summary: Sam gets rejected from Stanford.Things get weird from there.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & John Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 12
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note on timeline-- Dean gets four years on Earth after he sells his soul.  
> Title from the song Accident Prone. I've never heard it, but it seemed fitting.  
> I'll try to update within a week or so.  
> Thanks for reading, hope you like it, and I live for feedback! :)

Dean stares at the letter clenched in his hands. It’s too thin to be an acceptance letter, which means Sam got rejected from Stanford.

Despite what Sam might think, Dean knows all about his college plans. Dean might be stupid, compared to his genius of a younger brother, but he’s not dumb enough to have overlooked the SAT studying, the meetings with counselors, the bright pamphlets and smudged transcripts. John might be too busy drinking himself to death to notice, but Dean doesn’t know how not to pay attention to his brother with every waking moment.

Sam got rejected from Stanford. 

Sam didn’t get into the only school he applied to. 

Sam’s going to cry. He’ll try not to show it, try not to let John or Dean see, but he’ll end up sobbing in the bathroom. He’ll turn on the shower to cover the noise of his tears, but Dean will be able to hear them anyway.

Sammy didn’t get into Stanford. 

Sammy won’t leave. 

Dean wants to be relieved. He’s spent years wishing Sam wouldn’t leave him, after all, and this all but ensures his brother will never leave hunting behind. 

Dean tries to be happy about it. He really, truly does. 

Sammy’s going to cry.

Before Dean can process what he’s doing, he’s in the Impala heading towards the nearest hidden crossroads. 

Sam comes home to an acceptance letter from Stanford, along with the offer of a full ride from the financial aid office. He doesn’t tell anyone. 

Dean doesn’t tell anyone what happened that day either. 

What would the point be?

When the time comes for Sam to leave, Dean scrounges up every penny he has. He withdraws the entirety of his pitiful bank account and digs out the crumpled twenties he’s stolen from John’s wallet over the years as well. 

His life savings amounts to seven hundred dollars. Dean sneaks it all into the bottom of Sam’s duffle bag. 

Where Dean’s going, money won’t save him.

Dean drops Sam off at Stanford and doesn’t ask him to stay in touch. 

“Thanks for the ride Dean.” Sam’s tearing up. 

Dean sold his soul for a reason. He could never stand to see Sam cry.

“No chick flick moments,” he warns, trying to distract Sam. Sam ignores him. 

“You take care of yourself, okay?”

“I will, Sammy.” 

“Promise me.”

“I promise,” Dean says, and he almost means it. 

He has exactly fourteen hundred days left, and he has nothing left to stay on Earth for. Sam is set for life-- the demon promised he’d fall in love and be successful-- and that’s all Dean has ever lived for. 

But for Sammy, he’ll stay alive. For the next four years anyway.

Dean spends the next thirteen hundred and ninety six days hunting. The four days after that, he spends saying goodbye. 

Bobby knows something’s up, but Dean refuses to talk about it, and he relents eventually, too glad to see Dean to push too much. 

John doesn’t even pick up Dean’s calls; Dean gives up after the third day of silence. 

The dawn of day fourteen hundred and sixty finds Dean staring at the fifth draft of a letter to Sam. 

In the end, he just writes, 

_ I did it for you, Sammy. And I never regretted it for a moment.  _

_ Take care of yourself without me. _

He mails it with no return address and no signature. 

Sam will know who it’s from.    


As midnight strikes and the Hellhounds attack, Dean still doesn’t regret it. 

As Alastair starts over again, as he screams and dies and screams and dies and--

Dean still doesn’t regret it. 

As he tears souls apart, as he’s perfectly silent, Dean still doesn’t regret it. 

(It was for Sammy. 

It was always going to be worth it.)

Dean wakes up six feet under, choking on Sam’s name. He claws his way to the surface and starts walking.

He’s pretty sure it’s another one of Alastair’s games. But if it isn’t…

Dean has to know.

John picks up on the second ring.

“Winchester.”

“Dad?” Dean manages. “Dad, it’s--”

John hangs up.

Dean dials again.

“Listen, you piece of shit,” John says, low and cold. “I don’t know who or what you are, but if you use my boy’s voice one more time, I’m gonna track you down and skin you alive.”

“Been there,” Dean says. “Done that. Think of something more creative, Dad. I know for a fact you saw worse in Vietnam.”

There’s a pause. 

“So you know one thing about me,” John snarls. “That doesn’t mean I’m stupid enough to fall for your little act.”

Dean closes his eyes. He wants to slide to the floor. He wants to sleep. He wants to die again. 

Instead, he says, “You used to make me canned tomato soup when I got sick, because it was the closest you could get to mom’s tomato rice soup. The one and only time I saw you cry you were drunk on the anniversary of mom’s death and I had to bail you out of the slammer in Canton, Illinois. You have a scar on your back from the first time I stitched you up after a hunt because I didn’t know how to sew yet. When I felt bad, you offered me a shot of whiskey and told me about your friend Fred McMahon who once sewed you up drunk on absinthe. That enough to give me a chance?”

John is silent for a full fifteen seconds. Then, “If you’re really Dean, you won’t mind meeting me in Pastor Jim’s church. Midnight tonight.”

He hangs up.

Dean’s hands are shaking almost too much for him to hot wire the SUV he picks, but he manages. 

There’s a line of salt across the church door. Dean steps over it and almost sighs in relief. 

His father and Pastor Jim are waiting for him; John conducts every test there is on Dean while Pastor Jim keeps a shotgun pointed at Dean’s head.

After being splashed with holy water, he’s offered a silver knife. Dean slices into his arm without hesitation. When he isn’t told to stop, he does it again. And again.

“Shit,” John mutters. Then, louder, “Dean. Stop.”

Dean stops. John’s words sink in. “You believe it’s me?”

John’s face hardens. “Tell me the word we said we’d use if you ever got arrested.”

“Library,” Dean says promptly.

“If you were injured?”

“Des Moines.”

“If…” John looks away. “Damn. It’s really you, isn’t it.”

“‘S what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

John pulls Dean into a fierce hug. Dean blinks hard and holds on tight.

It’s been decades since he last experienced friendly touch. It’s incredibly foreign, and a little uncomfortable, but Dean wouldn’t dream of letting go.

John drops his arms and steps away. “I am pissed beyond belief at you, boy.”

Once, Dean would have been afraid. Now, he smiles crookedly and says. “Missed you too, Dad.”

True to form, John launches straight into an interrogation. Dean does his best, but after being asked how he got out for the fifth time, he snaps.

“I don’t fucking  _ know _ ,” he spits. John actually recoils in surprise at the venom in Dean’s voice. The surprise turns to anger quickly. 

“Don’t you talk to me like that.”

“Then don’t ask me the same questions over and over again. I’ve already told you,  _ I don’t know _ . Now tell me about Sam.”

John blinks. Then, surprising Dean, he laughs. “If I didn’t already know it was you, that would have convinced me. Sam’s fine. Worried sick about you. Dropped out of school to help look for you. Turned into a hell of a hunter.”

Dean’s vision spins. “He… He what?”

“Dean?” John’s heavy footsteps rush forward, but Dean’s already on the floor.

When Dean wakes up, Sam’s sitting by his bed reading  _ Slaughterhouse Five _ aloud.

“Sammy?” Dean croaks.

Sam’s by his side in an instant. “Oh thank God. Dean. Dean, I--”

“You dropped out of school,” Dean interrupts. “Why did you do that?”

Sam’s expression shifts into incredulity. “Because you were dead, Dean. What was I supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to have your apple-pie life, Sam! You were supposed to graduate and fall in love and be normal.”

“Without you?”

“Yes!”

“Without you,” Sam repeats. “You… You honestly thought that I would do that, that I  _ could _ do that, when I knew you were in Hell because of me?”

Dean jerks his head in a nod. 

“You--” Sam’s voice trembles with anger. “You son of a bitch. You honestly thought I didn’t care.”

“You were at Stanford. Why should you?”

“Because you’re my brother, you moron!”

Dean’s eyes are burning. “I went to Hell so you could go to Stanford. And you dropped out.”

Sam blanches. “You-- what?”

Dean shuts his mouth.

“I knew it was too good to be true,” Sam mutters. “Getting financial aid with the acceptance letter. I knew it was-- that was you?”

Dean doesn’t answer. 

“Christ, Dean.” Sam lets out an exhausted laugh. “Jesus Christ. I-- do you know what it did to me, you dying? And you expected me to stay . In school. I-- I can’t do this right now.” Sam stands up. 

“Sam,” Dean says. “Wait. Please.”

Sam hesitates in the doorway but leaves anyway. 

Dean slumps back onto his pillows and tries not to hear Alastair’s voice.

He fails.

Dean gets sick of feeling like an invalid approximately two minutes later. He struggles to his feet and out onto the landing.

A blond girl pokes her head out of the opposite door. “Oh. Hi, Dean. Wasn’t expecting you to get up yet, what with you driving all day.”

Dean stares at her. “Who the hell are you?”

“Oh. Right.” She laughs a little self-consciously. “You haven’t met me yet. I’m Jess. Sam’s girlfriend.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a whole lot happens in this chapter, but I wanted to update.  
> Thanks for reading, hope you like it, and I love feedback.

Dean sits at the kitchen table and stares at his fingers. It’s strange, how clean they are. They should be crusted in blood and worse, not pale and uncalloused and clean.

They shouldn’t be shaking, just like they shouldn’t be clean. 

They had been perfectly steady for ten years. Now they’re trembling so hard Dean doesn’t dare bring the cup of coffee he’d been given to his lips. 

His hands are wrong. 

They should show where he’s been. They should show what he’s done.

“So Sam’s got himself a girl,” Dean says. Across the table, John jolts slightly. 

Has Dean been silent for that long?

He glances at the clock above Pastor Jim’s stove. It’s ten minutes past when he remembers it being. When he curls his fingers around his cup, it’s cold. 

“Yeah,” John says. “Yeah. She’s a good one, too. Took to the life real well.”

Dean’s chest feels strange. Empty. “She’s a hunter.” He says it flatly. Distantly, Dean realizes what he’s feeling is anger. 

It’s been a long time since he was allowed to feel angry. It’s comforting. Familiar.

“Yeah.” John takes a sip of his own coffee. It has to be as cold as Dean’s, but he doesn’t so much as grimace, because John Winchester doesn’t flinch for anything or anyone. 

_ Alastair could have made him flinch _ , Dean thinks, and then he’s digging his shaking fingers into the cuts he’d made to prove himself. 

John’s eyes flicker with something Dean doesn’t know how to name anymore. “Cut that out.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean says automatically, dropping his hand. 

John nods, satisfied. 

Dean, realizing what he’s just said, swallows bile. 

_ Sir _ doesn’t belong to John anymore. 

Just like Dean, that word belonged to Alastair. 

“I told Sam you were missing and he came with me,” John says, continuing the earlier topic. “She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Thought I was crazy until we hit a woman in white with the Impala.”

Dean nods, doesn’t say  _ you son of a bitch how could you _ . 

“You gonna be okay hunting?” John asks. Dean can hear the real question behind the words.  _ How cracked are you? _

Dean’s lips peel back into something like a smile-- and John flinches. 

Dean guesses he can make anyone flinch. Hell and Alastair saw to that. 

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah, I can hunt.”

“Good. Because the demons are everywhere, and someone’s gotta stop ‘em. You’ll be going with Sam and Jess.”

“What about you?”

John jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Jim and I are mostly research these days. I took a werewolf to the leg a while back when your brother wouldn’t shoot--”

“She was innocent,” Sam says from the kitchen doorway. His face is shadowed. Behind him, Jess lays a hand on his shoulder. 

Dean could read his brother like a book, once. Now all he can see is Alastair’s eyes in Sam’s face as the razor cut in. 

“She was a monster,” John shoots back. There’s less heat in it than Dean would have expected. Must be an old argument. “Point is, I’m running point with Jim for the eastern US.”

“What about the western US?” Dean asks, distracted from his brother. 

“Bobby’s job,” John grunts. “Stubborn son of a bitch makes a good bureaucrat.”

Dean and Sam exchange a long-suffering look. For a moment, it’s so close to how it used to be Dean can’t breathe. 

Dean clears his throat and looks back to John.

“So when are we leaving?” Dean asks. 

Sam makes a noise Dean can only describe as a squawk. Jess says, “I don’t think you’re going anywhere.”

“Why the hell not?” Dean welcomes the anger rising. “‘Demons on earth’ seems clear cut enough to me.”

“Because you just got back from  _ Hell _ , Dean,” Sam says, patient like he only gets with children and the elderly.

“Gee, really? I forgot. I thought I just took a long nap.”

Sam’s mouth twists into a thin line. “I don’t think hunting will be good for you.”

“Don’t treat me like a goddamn invalid, Sammy. I can still kick your ass.”

“You wish,” Sam responds, momentarily distracted. 

“Boy says he’s fine, he’s fine,” John says. 

Sam’s mouth gets even thinner. “Dean once told you he was fine with a dislocated shoulder and three broken ribs.”

Jess makes a small noise that Dean doesn’t know how to interpret. 

“Don’t I get a say?” Dean says. “I’m fine.”

“Tell you what,” Sam says. “Look me in the eye and tell me that.”

Dean makes eye contact expecting Sam’s eyes to be white. 

“I’m fine,” Dean lies. “Don’t even remember anything.”

“See?” John claps Dean on the shoulder. Dean goes perfectly still. John doesn’t seem to notice. “Dean’s fine. Got a demon out in Charleston for you three. You should get going.”

Sam turns away without a word. Dean stands to follow. 

“Oh, Dean.” John shrugs out of his leather jacket and holds it out. “Figured you’d want this back.”

Dean swallows and pulls it on. It burns as it presses against the handprint on his shoulder, but Dean doesn’t give a damn. It smells like cigarette smoke and gunpowder and that cheap aftershave his father had used as long as he could remember. It smells like the Impala and gasoline and hotel soap.

It smells like home. 

“Thanks,” he chokes out.

“Yeah.” John looks away. “I think Sam’s got your amulet. Your clothes are in the room you crashed in. We, uh, we didn’t give anything away.”

“Got it.”

Dean’s halfway up the stairs when John calls, “I’m glad you made it back, son.”

“Me too,” Dean lies. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been a hell of a year, y'all.  
> May 2021 be better.  
> Warnings for this chapter: implied/referenced torture. Nothing outside the scope of the show, I don't think.  
> Let me know if y'all want short chapters more regularly or longer chapters even less regularly.

Dean goes for the driver’s seat at the same time Sam does. 

Sam backs down first. 

Dean goes to chuck Sam’s iPod at Sam’s stupidly shaggy head, but Jess protests, “That was his birthday present.”

Reluctantly, Dean doesn’t destroy the thing. As a reward to himself, he forces Sam and Jess to listen to Led Zeppelin I through IV. 

Jess sings along to _Ramble On_ ; when Dean glances at her in his rearview mirror, she winks. 

She rises further in Dean’s estimation. 

The demon out in Charleston turns out to be a pack of four demons, which Dean and Sam discover the hard way. They manage to trap one of the demons in a devil’s trap with Jess standing guard, but Sam only gets off half an exorcism before the door flies open and three more demons stroll in. 

Dean watches their eyes go black with something like relief. This much is familiar. 

“Exorcizamus te,” Sam starts. He has to know it’s hopeless. Dean sure as Hell does. 

Sam goes flying into the wall with the sound of breaking drywall. Dean doesn’t flinch, because Dean doesn’t flinch for demons. 

Not anymore. 

Dean doesn’t flinch for anything short of Alastair, these days. Hell saw to that. 

“Dean Winchester,” the lead demon muses. Her vessel would be a knockout in any other circumstances, tall with a cascade of blonde hair. “Alastair’s got a reward for the one who brings you back. Rumor has it he misses his… pet.”

Dean doesn’t flinch for demons, so he smiles, says, “Guess he’ll have to be lonely for a while longer.”

“And why’s that, sweetheart?”

“You missed something.” Dean lets himself smile the smile he gave Alastair for thirty years. It’s a dead man’s smile, but she doesn’t flinch.

She probably doesn’t flinch for humans.

She does order the two demons not in the devil’s trap to sweep the building before turning her attention to Sam. Experimentally, Dean tries to move. Nothing. He’s familiar with what it feels like to have a demon immobilize you, so he stops trying. 

The demon says, “Lilith’s been looking for you, Sammy.”

Dean knows that name, remembers it being hissed somewhere to his left in the freezing-dark-pain. Involuntarily, he finds himself straining against the demon’s control again. 

Nothing. 

“It’s Sam,” Sam says. “And I don’t give a damn.”

“You should,” the demon says, stepping closer. _Too close,_ Dean’s mind screams. _Too close, not Sam, not Sammy--_

“And why’s that?” Sam raises an eyebrow. 

“Because she wants to kill you first.”

Dean wouldn’t mind killing Lilith. What he minds is not hearing about this before now. What he minds is the realization that he hasn’t been the only one hiding things. 

“And who the hell,” Sam demands, “are you? What’s your role in all of this?”

Before the demon answers, gunfire erupts from outside the door. The demon curses and her head snaps back. The tell-tale stream of black smoke erupts from her mouth and her body falls to the floor. Sam drops to the ground almost simultaneously

There’s another gunshot. The wood around the door’s lock explodes. The door swings open to reveal Jess, shotgun in both hands.

The eyes of the demon in the devil’s trap flicker black. 

“So,” Dean says, stepping forward until the toes of his boots are just outside the devil’s trap. “What do you know about Lilith?”

“Go to Hell.” The demon’s eyes dart away from Dean’s.

“I’ve been,” Dean says. “Didn’t care for the company. Want to give me a real answer?”

He smiles the smile he’s been giving Alastair for ten years. The demon flinches. Dean’s smile widens. To his right, Jess whispers something to Sam. 

“Make me,” the demon spits, a fraction of a second too late. 

Dean pulls his flask of holy water from his jacket pocket. “Oh, sweetheart. All you had to do was ask.”

“Dean,” Sam says. 

“I got this, Sam.”

“I know, but maybe we should talk about--”

Dean’s not listening anymore. He’s got something to hurt in front of him. 

It’s just like home.

It’s harder, when they’re not strapped down. But Alastair was nothing if not thorough, so Dean has some experience with situations like this. Enough, anyway, to get the necessary information out of the demon. Besides, guns make everything easier.

The head demon, the one who possessed the blonde woman, was named Ruby; she has some sort of grudge against Lilith. The demon in the devil’s trap knows little else. 

Dean performs the exorcism when he’s satisfied the demon has nothing left to offer.

Dean takes three steps away from the devil’s trap, falls to his knees, and vomits bile onto the floor. 

Dean blinks and he’s in a shower in a hotel room. By the amount of steam curling through the room, he’s been in the shower for a while. 

He turns the water off with shaking hands, dries off while avoiding his reflection, and goes out to face the music.


End file.
